With acres of exhibition halls located 24 floors
below, it seemed odd to instead be sitting in a
hotel room with a city-wide view staring at a never-before-seen e-bike. But then this was no ordinary
e-bike, sprung from the collective brain trust
of none-too-ordinary company founders. Frank
Stronach and Fred Egli have spent more than five
decades in the automotive industry as both parts
suppliers for, and manufacturers of, a variety of
luxury car brands. While the leap to starting an
e-bike company may seem odd at first, it’s the
notion of new-world mobility and transportation that
got the duo rolling on two wheels.

We met up with Fred in the nosebleed heights
of the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas during the
Interbike Show
in Las Vegas. In
between watching
flights land and
take off from the
McCarran airport down
below, we pored over the
elegant-looking Elby and,
thanks to the spacious hotel room,
even took it for a short spin.

By far one of the more intriguingmoments of the meeting was the discussion wehad with Fred who was quick to acknowledge astrong belief in the future of electric bikes as asolution for the world’s transportation woes. Asa long-time car-industry bigwig, Fred even hadfirst-hand knowledge of Lee Iacocca’s less-than-successful foray into electric bike production inthe late ’90s (EBA, February 2015).

“I like transportation,” said Fred, before adding,
“With Elby I wanted to do something new, and
pushing innovation was key to the project. To
me, the bike industry doesn’t know how to build
e-bikes. You can’t just add a battery to a bicycle;
it has to be designed from the ground up. Our
goal is to create a mobility concept, and the Elby
is just the beginning. In fact, when I look at this
bike today, it’s just as the cell phone appeared
25 years ago—we still have a long way to go in
perfecting range and energy storage.”

VERBAL SPEED BUMPS

Like so many other bike launches we’ve been
to before, the Elby’s press release spoke highly of
itself. In glowing but very general terms that were
reminiscent of a Donald Trump stump speech,
we were told that the Elby was the “world’s
first one-size-fits-most pedal-assist hybrid
bicycle that’s attractive, intuitive, versatile
and confidence-inspiring from the very
first pedal stroke.”